A series of dashcam videos uploaded to YouTube show the truck
approaching the town of Tsemdolina – located just outside the
port of Novorossiysk, in Russia’s Krasnodar region – at full
speed from several miles away, after 1 p.m. local time on Monday.

The truck veers onto the median line to avoid the busy traffic
going in both directions, and the gasps from motorists are almost
audible, as the multi-ton vehicle misses them by inches.

Just outside Tsemdolina, population 11,000, the truck appears to
lightly clip a cement mixer, before speeding out of shot. The
video shows that the side of the cabin is almost destroyed by the
impact.

The rest can only be judged from the gnarled remains present at
the crash site, and a report from local police.

The runaway Scania hit the busiest point in the entire town – the
bus stop, where it impacted a mid-size passenger bus, which in
turn climbed onto an ancient Lada, stamping it into the ground,
and killing the passenger inside.

Two more buses and nearly a dozen cars were also affected by the
impact.

The cabin of the Scania appears almost entirely mangled, but the
driver and owner of the truck, a resident of nearby Astrakhan
region, was sufficiently well to be taken away and interviewed by
the police.

More than 27,000 Russians died on the road in 2013, the last full
year for which data is available. This is just over the amount of
deaths in the entire EU, which has more than three times the
population.